All the truly successful bacteria live in penthouses, writes Kate Coughlin

Pulsating gelatinous towers soar into the atmosphere. Tadpole-like spacecraft emerge from these biotic pillars and zoom along surging rivers as they swirl around the living monoliths.

Some of you may already have Ride of the Valkyries playing in your head. Yet this is not a scene from an Orwellian nightmare but the minuscule world of the "microbial metropolis" known as a biofilm.

Like the 80 per cent of us who live in the urban jungle, bacteria also know that living together is the key to success. Although they can be made up of a mixture of organisms, biofilms are predominantly composed of bacteria growing on both living and non-living foundations. Slide your tongue over your teeth - that rough surface you feel is the most ubiquitous and fairly innocuous biofilm - dental plaque.

However, bacteria growing in this manner can have more serious implications for public health and industry owing to their near invincibility to anti-microbials. The more serious infections they can cause include bacterial endocarditis (infection of heart valves), Legionnaire's disease and colonisation of the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, all of which can be lethal. Biofilms can also cause millions of pounds' worth of damage by infecting waterlines and drug manufacturing equipment.

So how are these biofilms established? The pioneers of the community are the "tadpole-like spacecrafts" of bacteria. They whip their tail-like flagella to overcome the forces of the "surging rivers" and settle on their chosen surface.

Aptly named "twitching motility", this event heralds the early beginnings of the biofilm. Dr Pauline Handley of the University of Manchester explains: "A biofilm builds up by bacteria stacking on top of each other to create a series of towerblocks of cells."

And the cement that holds these "towerblocks" together? The gelatinous goo of exopolysaccharide (EPS). This gunk is produced by the bacteria and forms an impenetrable shield that defends against antibiotics. It also safeguards the biofilm from hostile environmental conditions.

"EPS is vital as it protects the biofilm from shear forces by anchoring the bacteria to the surface. In fact it has been found that the stronger the shear force, the stronger the EPS," explains Dr Handley.

Like most crowded cities, biofilms also have a seedy part of town. It has been suggested that the conditions in a biofilm ensure the exchange of genetic material is more efficient. This is bad news if the genes are for antibiotic resistance, making the infection nearly impossible to eradicate.

Far from being serendipitous, these processes are a series of highly orchestrated events co-ordinated by an elite communication system termed "quorum sensing".

Employing small hormone-like molecules, this chemical language allows the millions of bacteria in the biofilm to co-ordinate their behaviour by the "switching on" of certain genes. "Quorum sensing causes bacteria to differentiate into stacks and bacteria deficient in the quorum sensing system remain as flat structures," says Dr Handley.

The phenomenon is also responsible for the production of various virulence factors that allow the bacteria to invade an infected host once their numbers are sufficient enough to carry out a full-scale attack.

Microbiologists have long proposed that blocking this system is the answer to the biofilm problem, but now a possible solution has emerged from the field of chemistry.

Helen Blackwell, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is currently investigating molecules that mimic the quorum sensing ones, thus confusing the bacteria. She and her team hope to create chemicals that block the sensors on the bacteria, cutting off their lines of communication.

Speaking from her laboratory in Wisconsin, Dr Blackwell explains her techniques: "We know the structure of these natural quorum-sensing molecules so are able to produce them synthetically in the lab. We can then systematically alter the compounds using combinatorial methods to produce a 'library' of potent quorum sensing inhibitors."

As these compounds act to "slow the bacteria down", it is hoped that the bacteria will acquire resistance at a much reduced rate. And although Dr Blackwell's work has found some promising compounds, she explains that there is still a long way to go. "Bacteria in a biofilm are rarely of one type so in the process of infection there are many different chemical languages being used."

In the cosmopolitan biofilm, the elusive prize is to find a common language, chemicals that all the bacteria can understand. While this search has continued for more than 25 years and many unanswered questions remain, it seems that order may soon be established in the microbial metropolis.

The author, of The Royal Institution of Great Britain, came second in the older category of the latest BASF/Daily Telegraph science writer awards.

Prize winners receive their awards tomorrow in Dublin, at the British Association's science festival.

Mr. Jill seems sensitive for clue.
Its all not that difficult as long as you give room to new idea.

You can reduce a lot to memory and what happens if information starts to live its own life(...)
Some information will prove consistent with the past
(like identical or copy)
other type information belongs to random recombination ....
like creation?

This micro organism climbs in is own tree,
like using a supportive scaffolding.

fact that all subsequent elements represent one,
makes that the thing on its own also can exist without this contruction.

All elements seem well informed about this identity
I think this is what you may call "a multi cellular entity"

The study of many biological processes requires the analysis of three-dimensional (3D) structures that change over time. Optical sectioning techniques can provide 3D data from living specimens; however, when 3D data are collected over a period of time, the quantity of image information produced leads to difficulties in interpretation. A computer-based system is described that permits the analysis and archiving of 3D image data taken over time. The system allows a user to roam through the full range of time points and focal planes in the data set. The user can animate images as an aid to visualization and can append multicolored labels and text notes to identified structures during data analysis. The system provides a valuable tool for the study of embryogenesis and cytoplasmic movements within cells and has considerable potential as an educational tool.

C. Thomas, P. DeVries, and J. White are with the Integrated Microscopy Resource for Biomedical Research (IMR), University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA. J. Hardin is in the Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

AND THIS:

ITNOW - September 2005

Data storageThe thin blue lightSteve Tongish, director of marketing at Plasmon, takes a look at the future of optical storage.
Optical storage has been part of the computer industry for more than 25 years. It has proven itself as a cost-effective mass-market consumable in the form of CDs and DVDs and also as a professional data archival technology, first in a 12-inch format and later in a 5.25-inch cartridge.

Physical robustness, long media life and write-once data authenticity are just a few of the qualities that have made optical storage so successful in the past and new technology developments will ensure its use for many years in the future.

The optical storage industry is in the middle of a major technology shift, transitioning from lower density red lasers to higher density blue lasers. New blue laser-based products use the same fundamental technology, but take advantage of the shorter wavelength offered by blue lasers to dramatically increase media capacity. First generation blue laser products offer a three-fold storage increase with as much as 30Gb on a single cartridge and they also have a well-defined roadmap for even greater capacity for future generations.

This new technology is changing the face of both the consumer and professional optical storage industries, but the requirements of these two markets are leading to the development of distinctly different products, targeting very different applications.

Consumer optical storageThe CD and DVD market is huge and while there are some data storage applications for these technologies the space is dominated by consumer demand for audio, video and computer games. As higher definition content such as HDTV becomes more commonplace, it is clear that CD and DVD media capacities are simply not sufficient. Since blue laser technology will provide the capacity and performance required by these new applications, all of the traditional CD and DVD technology vendors are actively working on blue laser products.

Tanned Chitin Like....... Ok so if differentation is fact and we cannot narrow it down, then we must first try an average. What is the "CRITICAL TEMPERATURE" of our tanned chitin like little bug. or what would the critical temp be on average for what order this tends toward in forming. See this link Page 6. http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA_ ... v2_p11.pdf

Southcity

"First they ignore you...
Then they laugh at you...
Then they fight you...
Then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi

Although it is difficult to determine the climatic conditions during much of Earth's early history, there are a number of lines of evidence that suggest that the climate was not so different then as compared to now, at least in terms of the average planetary temperature. Various water-deposited sedimentary rocks tell us that the hydrologic cycle was up and running and that the oceans were not entirely frozen at a very early date (around 3.8 Byr), gypsum crystals in ancient sediments indicate that the temperature could not have been too high since it is not stable above about 40°C. Occasional glacial deposits in the Precambrian also argue for a planet that was not too hot. Recently, we have learned that there may have been some important, yet brief climatic excursions (the Snowball Earth Hypothesis), but on the whole, most paleoclimatologists consider that the climate has remained relatively stable over the long time periods. This is somewhat of a puzzle given the history of our Sun, and the implications for Earth's temperature.